Pearl Poet (Gawain Poet)

Nothing is known of the author beyond what the manuscript allows us to infer: he wrote in the dialect of the north-west Midlands at the end of the fourteenth century, knew court life, hunting and theology, and used the alliterative verse inherited from the Anglo-Saxon tradition when London was moving to rhyme. The name given to him comes from the first of the four poems that the manuscript brings together. No document names him, and it is not known whether he was a cleric or a layman.

In the catalogue 1

• PoetrySir Gawain and the Green KnightPearl Poet (Gawain Poet) · 1390LiteraturePublic domain